


The Apology of Gabriel

by theneonpineapple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous Slash, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Developing Friendships, Discworld References, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Parallels, Post-Episode: s13e18 Bring 'em Back Alive, Willy Wonka References, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-09 21:46:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14724158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theneonpineapple/pseuds/theneonpineapple
Summary: No, not that kind of apology.After the events of "Bring Em Back Alive", Sam Winchester finds Gabriel sitting in his bedroom at the bunker, reading a Terry Pratchett novel that he stole from Sam's shelf. What follows is a series of late-night conversations that invariably end with Gabriel vanishing and Sam trying to unstick pages glued together with sugar.What Sam winds up with, besides a collection of sticky paperbacks, is something rather like a friend.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted from my tumblr @wayward-idiots.
> 
> Canon compliant (I think?) through the end of 13x18. Diverges thereafter.

Gabriel's perched on a chair in Sam's room, reading a worn copy of _The Color of Magic_. "Hiya, Sammy," he says, and pops a caramel in his mouth.

Sam thinks maybe, normally, this would create one of _those_ headaches. The kind of headaches usually only Dean can summon up, when he's being especially annoying. But he's just. Too tired.

"Gabriel," he says. Then, bitterly, "You're looking better."

"It's amazing what a little fresh air and lots of sex will do for you, after torture and captivity."

He can't even inflect the amount of anger he _should_ be feeling when he says, "Yeah. I know a bit about torture and captivity."

That makes something not-quite-change in Gabriel's expression. He turns a page. "You gotta stop praying to me," he says.

Sam's jaw sets. "So you've been hearing me."

Finally he looks up. One eyebrow rises. "Be hard not to." Then the other eyebrow joins it, in a familiar waggle. "You're _loud_ , Sam."

He exhales sharply, shaking his head. "So, what. That's all you're here to do? Tell me to stop praying? _No_ , Gabriel. We need you. You're our only chance of saving the world – two worlds, even."

"Sorry, kiddo. Not gonna happen."

"Then get used to me praying. 'Cause there's not much else I can do."

"You saved the world before."

"Yeah," Sam says, "and it _didn’t stick_."

"I warned you about my family, Sam," says Gabriel. "You don't know 'em like I do. Every time a door closes, a window opens and three more of our mistakes pour in. If it's not one of Luci's _creations_ , it's a secret aunt, or niece, or nephew. It's Dad's personal secretary getting uppity and trying to rewrite the universe, it's our sister mind-wiping other angels, it's _alternate universe versions of our big brother_. And all of them, all of them, are gonna have some stupid plot. Because that's what happens. Why do you think I wanted to get away so badly?"

"We're gonna get everything set to rights," Sam says, desperation creeping in. He's tired. He's so _tired_. Hearing it all laid out is just making him more bone-deep weary. "We're going to get it all worked out, once and for all, even if – no matter what it takes."

"That's the problem," says Gabriel. "That's always been your problem. You and Dean and my brothers. _Whatever it takes_. Hasn't it ever occurred to you that doing whatever it takes, with no limit, no point where you say, _let's not_ , is exactly what got you into this mess? Hmm?"

It's an echo of Mystery Spot, ten years ago now, and Sam wonders if Gabriel can stick him in a time loop just so he can get some sleep. But then he immediately feels guilty. If he had extra time, he'd use it researching a way out of this mess—

Gabriel sighs, and Sam thinks maybe he's listening to his thoughts. And he vanishes.

But he leaves the book. It's Sam's, after all.

... _He left sticky caramel fingerprints on the book_.

Sam's gonna kill him.

* * *

Gabriel shows up again, reading another one of Sam's battered collection of Discworld novels, sucking on a lollipop. "Your prayers are getting a little pathetic, now."

"It's called desperation," Sam says curtly.

"Nice trick, the little storytime about my _nephew_."

"Jack is good," Sam says. "You'd like him. Actually, you probably won't. He won't appreciate your, uh, unique sense of humor."

"You're saying he's boring."

"I'm saying you're an asshole."

Gabriel pulls the lollipop out of his mouth. "You're in a _mood_ ," he says. "I like it. Much better than the sad sack shit you've been up to recently, moping around."

"The only hope of saving two universes is sitting in my bedroom, getting sugar all over my books and refusing to help. I can't even be _sad_ at this point."

"Stop calling me that. I'm not your Obi-Wan, kid."

"You know, I used to pray for you. After you died. Or faked your death and ran away to Monte Carlo. I wasn't sure what happened to angels, when they died. But I prayed for you anyway. I thought you'd died giving the world a chance, because you believed in humanity – but you just wanted to disappear in a cloud of smoke."

"I _did_ give humanity a chance, you numbskull," says Gabriel. "I saved you two yahoos! And I left you that video! And I sacrificed a lot to do it, too."

Sam snorts.

Gabriel's eyes flash dangerously, and then he's on his feet, stalking towards Sam. "My big brother was willing to kill me," he says. "He practically _raised_ me. And he was willing to go through me just to keep having his little tantrum. And I get to live with that. Perfect memory recall, kiddo! Perks of the archangel gig, 'specially when you're the Messenger! He would've stabbed me with my own blade. Just for having a spine. So forgive me if I'm not too keen to come back for family dinner."

He turns away and disappears again, before Sam can even reply. _Hogfather_ falls to the ground in a flutter of pages.

* * *

"Why are you even here? Don't you have models in Monte Carlo to get back to?"

Gabriel is hold _Reaper Man_ upside down and drinking a cocktail that looks like it'll be horrifically sticky. "Pornstars, and no. Turns out, when you show up to capture an archangel, you aren't too concerned about collateral damage."

"Oh," says Sam.

"All of them are dead now," Gabriel says, unnecessarily. "Except the ones in psych wards. So. No."

"I'm sorry."

Gabriel keeps pretending to read the book. Or maybe he is reading it. Surely archangels can read upside down. "They were just pornstars."

"Were they your friends?"

"Yeaaaaah… Not really a friends kind of guy."

"There was Kali."

"She's not answering my calls," says Gabriel. "She's back with Shiva, I guess."

"That… sucks."

"This conversation sucks," Gabriel says. "Shouldn't you be yelling and pitching fits about me not joining your boyband?"

"I don't think forcing you to do things is gonna be very effective for me. So, no, I'm not gonna bother. You're not going to help us, you're not going to leave me alone, you're just going to hang around and screw with my stuff, and I have bigger problems than you. In part because of you. So if you could just get around to the vanishing act part of the evening, that'd be great."

"Oh, I'm going," Gabriel says, "but not because you told me to."

"Sure," says Sam.

Gabriel sneers a little, and then he's gone.

* * *

"Not in the mood," Sam greets Gabriel, and the Red Vines, and _Interesting Times_. They spent an entire week chasing leads, and he's tired.

"There's not an end to this, Sam. You just keep shoveling shit and eventually you reach the bottom and it's just another giant turd."

"So we divert a river," Sam says stubbornly. "We cut the knot. We do _something_ , besides sit around drinking mojitos and waiting for the world to end!" His voice raises steadily as he speaks, until he's almost yelling, and dear – someone, it's the most he's felt besides empty despair in ages.

"Why?" Gabriel demands.

"PEOPLE!" Sam half-shouts. He takes a deep breath to calm down. "People, Gabriel."

"I think," he says, quietly, "this is the part where I disappear."

"Yeah," Sam says. "I think it is." He rubs at his head, but Gabriel's still there.

"He's still my brother," says Gabriel. "Another universe's version of him. But it's Michael. _Michael_. And the only thing worse than seeing Michael again. Is seeing Lucifer. Especially my—especially this universe's Lucifer."

"You think I don't feel the same way?" Sam asks. Seeing Lucifer again had been—

"Imagine if Dean had killed you. Imagine if Dean fully believed he was killing you and you watched him stab your clone, and twist the knife, and lower the body to the ground, in some mockery of _grief_. Imagine if you were left standing over your own body knowing your brother had done that to you."

Sam absolutely, resolutely doesn't think about flat black eyes and a hammer and the face of the man who'd raised him. Doesn't think about how the love he felt for Dean had been enough to fight back Lucifer, but Dean couldn't resist the urge to kill him as a demon.

He doesn't think about it. Because he knows it's not Dean's fault, logically, rationally, and he's not going to hold Dean responsible for something that wasn't his fault—but even if it had been. Sam knows.

"I think," he says, "I'd still go back. If it was Dean."

"You ever think maybe you shouldn't?"

Sam's too tired. He's just too tired. "Why are you here?"

"Maybe I want you to get out too. Before it's too late."

"Why should you care?"

"I shouldn't," he says.

"Then don't."

"I won't."

"Good."

"Fine."

They're just staring at each other.

"Can I have my book back?"

"I got strawberry licorice on the dedication page."

"Of course you did," sighs Sam. But he takes the book, and just as he does, the other hand holding it is gone, and so is Gabriel.

* * *

It's been two months since Asmodeus, and Sam still hasn't mentioned to Dean that their only hope of saving Mom, Charlie, and Jack – along with the world – is maybe. Visiting him. Regularly.

But things from the outside world have been… quiet.

Weirdly quiet.

"Oh, that," says Gabriel, when he mentions it. "You're in a time bubble, Sam. I thought I'd let you spin your wheels for a while, hoping you'd finally get some rest. It was _your_ idea."

"I'm—what?"

"What did you do today, Sam?"

"I…" Sam can't remember specifics, except that Cass had snorted quietly at something he'd said at lunch, and that Dean had made lasagna for dinner again, and nothing new had cropped up anywhere—

"What did you _do_?" He demands.

Gabriel holds up his hands. "Like I said, you need to spin your wheels for a bit, hopefully realize this is all fruitless – and hey, it's been slightly less miserable than your daily life! That's all I could do, if I made it too comfy you would've freaked out immediately. But you've gotten more sleep the past month, which has really only been a half-hour, maybe. Unless I… the point is, you've been sleeping!"

Sam advances on him. "You shoved me in a _time loop_?"

"Not a loop. A bubble. Your own personal vacation." He gestures around. "So it kind of sucks, because again, you'd never accept leaving the bunker or taking some actual time off. But hey, I do what I can."

"What you can do is put me back. Now."

"Sam—"

"I can't believe you did this to me again," Sam says. "I thought maybe you and I were getting to a point where—no," he says. "Just. Send me back."

"You need to rest, Sam. Now that you've been eased into it, we could go to Aruba—"

"Send. Me. Back."

Gabriel blinks, and he's gone, and Sam's in his room, and the only difference is that _The Light Fantastic_ is sitting in its place on the shelf. But he knows it's reality again. And that means he has to tell Dean.

* * *

There's a lot of yelling, and fretting, and more yelling, when Sam tells Dean and Cass what's going on.

Finally he goes to his room, feeling oddly like a child grounded, and sits down on the edge of his bed, his elbows on his knees. He looks down at the floor as he laces his fingers. He still feels strange, praying, now that he's _met_ the guy, but he finds something soothingly repetitive in the _Pater Noster_.

He gets about halfway through before Gabriel says, "You don't like to make things easy on yourself, do you, kiddo?"

"You could make them easier, if you're so concerned."

"I tried."

"You could do something more permanent, if you helped us against Michael."

"I could," Gabriel allows, "but I won't."

"Why are you here, Gabriel?"

"Call it my apology. The Apology of Gabriel. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?"

"If you're really sorry—"

"Sam, Sam, Sam. I mean the _original_ meaning of apology."

Sam slips his hands in his pockets. "Maybe I don't care about your explanation."

"Maybe not," says Gabriel. "But you'll listen. Who else would?"

Sam looks past Gabriel and swallows.

"Oh, you'll have plenty of people to listen to you," Dean says, and throws his lighter down.

Gabriel spins around as the holy oil flares up into flames around him. Dean folds his arms. Cass is hovering just a step behind him, his expression shadowy. "You son of a bitch—" Gabriel begins.

"Sorry, Sam, but you were taking too long."

The look Gabriel turns on Sam is filled with so much honest hurt and betrayal, a moment before it becomes disdain, that Sam feels like he's literally going to be sick.

* * *

Eventually, both Dean and Cass leave Sam's room. Sam stays hunched over a book he hasn't managed to read a word of while they argue in low voices. There's the sound of something breaking. Dean must be frustrated, panicking – the prospect of losing Charlie again, especially, is hurting him, Sam knows.

And Cass—well. Cass didn't exactly have many surviving brothers or sisters, not ones that cared.

The lighter in his pocket, still unused, seems to weigh a hundred pounds. But that's just the guilt. _We need to talk to him without him being able to disappear the moment he disagrees with something we say_ , Castiel had said. _I don't like the idea of trapping him, but if it will help him see reason—_

Personally, Sam thinks Gabriel's been trapped plenty long enough.

But the world hangs in the balance.

He's the one who owes an apology, now. In both senses of the word. He almost hesitates to go back to his room – but it's _his room_ , dammit. So he goes back, without asking Dean or Cass, and viciously argues with himself that he shouldn't feel the need to ask at all. He's a grown man. Going to his own room. It just happens to have a captive archangel in it. It's not like he's going to do anything stupid.

Like free him.

Gabriel's sitting on the floor, hugging his knees.

Oh, god.

"Gabriel—"

But he doesn't know what to say, and there's no response.

Sam stands lamely at the edge of the ring of holy fire, wondering – no, if he crosses it, Gabriel will just use him as leverage to get free, and Dean will be furious with him for taking the risk. Gabriel might well hurt him, now. He hasn't exactly been disinclined previously, although Sam had thought they were maybe approaching an accord, before he realized he was stuck in a time bubble, getting nothing done except sleep, the space of two months in his head—

"I…" There are a thousand justifications for this. A thousand ways to express how sorry he is. "Tell me about the pornstars."

Gabriel leans back a little, like he's surprised. But he doesn't look up.

"Come on, you must've spent a lot of time with them, and Cass says you went on and on about them for a while when you left us that message. I know you don't want to talk about – any of this. And I don't want you to get stuck in your head again. So. Tell me about the hot girls."

Slowly, Gabriel's eyes raise to his. He quirks the barest shadow of his old smirk. "Who says they were all girls?"

"Then tell me about them all," says Sam.

Gabriel does – and between the lewdness, and the bizarreness of the entire situation, and way too much information, Sam starts to know these people. People who were murdered by demons, people Gabriel had at least liked enough to spend so much of his time with, if not exactly cared about. But Gabriel pauses, in the middle of wild gesticulation about the breasts of a woman named Lucretia, and says, "So your brother's Bad Cop, little Cassie is Good Cop, and you're… Sex Cop? Malibu Barbie Cop?"

"I'd just carry on our usual conversation, but I'd feel bad arguing with you if you can't run away every time I start winning the argument," says Sam.

Gabriel does snort a little at that.

But when he speaks again he says, "You're not going to get what you want, Sam. You can tell our brothers that, too. And with your usual hammer-headed approach, you're just going to make another enemy. And trust me, kid. I can make your lives _even worse_."

"You can try," Sam says, stretching a little as he sprawls back against the wall. The holy fire is warming his feet through his boots, almost like sitting by a campfire. It's doing strange things to Gabriel's face, the haunted look that never seems far behind the usual smirking. Sam thinks it's not so different from how he was before. But before, he hadn't seen the vulnerability past the malice.

"Dean doesn't know half as much about torture as he thinks he does," Gabriel says. "He can't break me."

"He won't torture you at all," Sam tells him.

"Wow, you are an idiot," says Gabriel. "Your brother's an avid disciple of the ends justifying the means. I mean, the Mark of Cain? How many people did he kill like that?"

"Don't," says Sam.

Gabriel looks at him pityingly. Like Mystery Spot. Like the end of those other, miserable months that never were, talking about weak spots. Like he had in another ring of fire, in a warehouse, talking about Cain and Abel.

"He really is just like Michael, you know."

"And I'm like Lucifer, yes, I've heard, a thousand times."

"No," says Gabriel. "You're me. You just went back to your family, and fought the good fight. I just can't decide if that makes you or me the bigger coward, here."

Sam rubs at his face. "Why does it have to make either of us a coward?" He asks. "Why can't it just make us people who made different choices, and both wound up miserable?"

"I wouldn't _be_ miserable if people would stop dragging me back in."

"You were miserable," says Sam, because he recognizes it better in hindsight than he did at the time. He can't get it out of his head, Gabriel trying to warn him after Mystery Spot, Sam just begging for Dean back.

"Not as miserable as I would've been if I'd stuck around. You've _met_ my family. I would've been misterable with them. At least the pagans had fun, sometimes."

Sam's barely listening. "Why didn't you just say it outright?"

Gabriel's quiet. Long enough that Sam regrets saying anything, long enough that Sam remembers _hellooooo, trickster!_ , long enough that he opens his mouth to try and explain his train of thought. Then,

"Would you have believed me?"

"You could've shown me. I would've at least been more cautious."

"Would you have?"

"Stop just – turning the question back on me."

"I could've screamed my throat hoarse explaining it, could've shown you how it would all unfold – which I didn't even know, by the way – and you still would've wanted Dean back."

"He sold his soul for me," Sam says. "I never wanted him to – why would he do that! I never wanted any of this! If I had died, if I had just died then, if I had never been born, this never would have happened, and _I hate him for saving my life!_ I hate him for saving my life over and over, and I've spent my entire life trying to make up for the crime of being born and I just want to rest."

Gabriel tilts his head. "I told you so," he says.

"I hate you too," Sam says.

"At least this is better than the little cheerleader act. Let's all just put our pompoms up and save the world! We can do it if we just _work together_! Gimme a break, Sam. You're clinging to the optimist act because if you don't, this whole ship goes under. The ship being your sanity, of course. You have to believe there's a light at the end of the tunnel even when there is no tunnel, because otherwise you have to accept that you're buried alive."

Sam exhales, some time later. He doesn't know what to say, except, "So dig me out."

"I'm not a shovel."

 _I'm not a tool_ , he hears. _Stop trying to_ use _me._ The Winchesters, turning their friends into weapons since –

Well.

Always.

"You're not even my friend," Sam mutters. "Why does this bother me."

"You're me," says Gabriel, "and I'm _you_. I'm you, if you'd just packed your shit and left like you wanted to a thousand times. Of course, that doesn't do much to help me, because you hate the reminder that you never _had_ to stay, if you'd just grown a pair."

"You hate the reminder that you could've stayed, if you'd had the spine."

Gabriel sneers. "So we hate each other. Glad we've spent half the night establishing that."

Sam checks his watch, startled. It's almost dawn.

So much for sleep. Not that he'd have done much of it anyway. He got plenty in the time bubble, he could've spent the night in the library – instead of just talking in circles with Gabriel. So much talking, and they hadn't managed to do anything but make Sam actually say the things he's been carefully boxing up and ignoring because there isn't _time_ to want to lay down and die when there's work to be done.

He drops his arm back to his side and leans his head back against the wall. He's getting too old to sit on the floor like this. His entire back hurts.

"Sooooo…" Gabriel says.

He lifts his head a little.

Gabriel's sitting on his heels, no longer hugging his knees to his chest – it's strange to see the archangel kneeling. Like his eyes should be cast upwards. But there's nothing up there worth praying to, is there? Not anymore.

"What now?"

Sam barely hears him. The gears are turning in his head. _I'm you_ , he said. _You're me_. _As it is in Heaven, so it must be on Earth_ , the repeated image, the multiplanar motif. Two brothers, two sets of two brothers, three sets, Cain and Abel, Michael and Lucifer, Lucifer and Gabriel, Sam and Dean, Gabriel and Castiel…

 _Hey, bro. How's the search for Dad going_?

"Why are you making that face."

_Dad's on a hunting trip. And he hasn't been home in a while._

"You look like you're thinking a lot over there."

_My father turned his back on his creation. Guess it just runs in the family._

"I think I can see smoke. Is this an epiphany? Are you having an epiphany? Hopefully not in the original sense of the word, because that _could_ get ugly—"

 _I think he wants us to pick up where he left off. Saving people, hunting things. The family business_.

"Gabriel?" Sam says. "Shut up."

_You don't know my family._

_What you guys call the Apocalypse, I used to call Sunday dinner._

_I just want it to be_ over _._

_You don't know my family…_

But Sam did. Raphael. Zachariah. Metatron. Michael. Lucifer. Oh, gods, _Lucifer_. That was his big brother? Sam tries to overlay Lucifer with Dean. And somehow Cass fits nicely in Michael's place. He _is_ older than Dean, after all. Dean had tortured people, had chased Sam with a claw hammer. Castiel had literally taken over Heaven. They'd all done awful things. To an outsider, Dean might be terrifying. Cass objectively _was_ terrifying. And Sam didn't want to be between them fighting. But…

But Lucifer isn't Dean, and Dean isn't Lucifer, and he actually. Feels a little guilty even comparing Cass to Michael. Not to mention his brother to _the freaking Devil_.

And Dean and Cass had fought, dozens of times, times when Sam had been pretty sure their little trio would end with one killing the other, or vice versa. And yeah, he'd stayed out of Dean's way a little more during their quarrels. But –

Sam gets to his feet.

Gabriel watches him warily. And yeah, Sam recognizes that wariness. He's been to Hell, he's been tortured, he's looked at the world waiting for the next blow to fall.

He smothers a section of the holy fire. And then he drags his toe further down the circle, until it's uncomfortably warm and besides, it only needed a small gap.

"I'm not you," he says. "You're not me. I'm a Winchester, and you're an angel. Your family sucks. Your brother ditched Heaven for _my_ family, and we're not exactly a shining beacon of functioning family dynamics, here. So it doesn't matter if we scream ourselves hoarse trying to beg you to help us save the world. You made your peace with the fact that your family was going to destroy it, and everything else you've ever cared about, long before me and Dean came around putting wrenches in the works."

Gabriel, slowly, stands up.

"If this is some sort of trick—" he begins.

"I think that's more your domain," says Sam.

"You freeing me out of the goodness of your heart isn't going to inspire an about-face turn. And I _don't_ owe you for this."

"I betrayed you by letting them trap you, I'm freeing you, sorry about the reminder of your trauma, call it even for the reminder of mine."

"What's gotten into _you_?" Gabriel asks, eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"You ever get to three am and have a brief, crazy moment where you think, fuck it?"

Gabriel cocks an eyebrow. "It's always three am somewhere." And he snaps his fingers, and he's gone, and Sam realizes this is the first time he's seen Gabriel snap his fingers since the entire ordeal started.

And for a moment he's smiling, but then he remembers that Dean's going to wake up from too-little sleep and expect to find an archangel still here.

"Impulse control," Sam reminds himself, "this is why we exercise _impulse control_."

He can't quite bring himself to regret it.


	2. Part II

When Dean and Cass are done yelling – at Sam, at each other, at the world, a little more at Sam, then at each other again – there's a lengthy, eggshell laden silence.

"How was he?" Cass asks softly.

Sam thinks about the very graphic descriptions of pornstars, and the snap of his fingers, and the slow curl of a smirk before he disappeared. Like the Cheshire Cat. He thinks about the slow uncurling from the hunched up shape, about the way the light of the fire became less austere on his face, about wariness becoming more like healthy suspicion. He thinks about all the ways Gabriel has always been haunted, and how it's worse now, how obvious it is that he's been hurt to the very core by not just Asmodeus, but the revelations he and Cass had heaped on him.

"Better," he says. He's careful in how he says it. "He's… better."

"Good for him," says Dean, with a snort.

Cass looks tired. "Good for him," he repeats.

"Maybe it'll be good for us," Dean muses.

"No," says Sam. "We can't count on Gabriel for this one. He's out."

"That's generally what happens when you release someone from a trap, yeah."

"I mean he's _out_. And we should let him be. Not everyone wants to go down swinging."

"Then what does he want?"

Sam can almost hear Dean thinking about carrots and sticks. "I don't know," he says, truthfully. Thoughtfully.

* * *

Gabriel is sitting in the chair, and he's reading _Hogfather_ again. The shadow of his wings stretches across the walls of Sam's room.

"I'm dreaming," Sam says.

"Well, I was hardly going to show up in person again," says Gabriel, archly.

Sam looks at the ceiling, and the tops of Gabriel's wings where their conspicuous absence casts its shadow. "What do you want?"

"You got a lot of nerve to be rude to me after today, Sam. Holy fire? Treachery? Ringing any bells?"

"I meant it in the original sense of the phrase," Sam answers. When Gabriel doesn't answer, he repeats, "What do you _want_?"

"I told you before," Gabriel tells him.

"Tell me again."

"I just want it to be over."

Sam wakes up feeling surprisingly rested for how little sleep he got.

There's a Twix on his nightstand, resting on top of _Hogfather_.

* * *

Sam is dreaming.

He knows, because Bobby and Mom and Mrs. Tran are sitting at the kitchen table in the bunker, and Rowena is posed carefully, birdlike, perched on the edge of the table, trying to get Castiel's attention while he tries to focus on Dean teaching him to cook. And Charlie is sitting on the counter, not a pose but _her_ , vibrant and alive and filled with joy as she makes wild suggestions to Dean about what to cook next. _The Color of Magic_ is in her hands, a battered copy of _The Hobbit_ lying next to her. There's an Asimov on the table.

He knows he's dreaming because Kevin is sitting at the table, whole, eyes bright, no circles under them. And Jack is sitting beside him, listening raptly to Kevin talk about college admissions.

He knows that Bobby's arm around the back of Mom's chair as she drinks her coffee with her hands curled around the mug, eyes crinkled over the rim as she and Mrs. Tran watch Kevin try to explain standardized testing to a Nephilim who's already arrived at the obvious conclusion that it's _goddamn ass stupid_ , in Dean's words – he knows it's just the stuff of wild dreams.

He knows that Crowley probably calls to insult them sometimes, and his and Rowena's consistent revolving door betrayals of them and each other are just amusing antics, and that Charlie jokes about Sam and Cass being Jack's parents, and Ketch isn't anywhere to be found.

He doesn't know that Gabriel's standing beside him until he takes a half-step forward without thinking, and the entire thing freezes with the sound of a record scratch. Like Ferris Bueller. Sam turns. Gabriel is sucking on a lollipop.

"This is what you want?" Gabriel asks. "Pretty boring. No jello, no strippers – "

"I just want my family to be happy," Sam tells him.

Gabriel pulls a face around the stick of the lollipop.

"There's another Kevin out there. There's another Charlie. I could fix what I—I know they're not the same. I know I can't get them back. I know Bobby doesn't _want_ to come back. But they're my family. I want this. I want peace, I want Dean to – to nurture people, instead of killing them. I want the kids who are out there hunting to show up whenever they want, I want Jack to have friends, I want Mom to be happy, I want Cass to experience humanity without losing everything he's got to do it, I want whatever happiness I can carve out of the world. And I know it'll never be like this. I know Mom and Bobby won't fall in love, I know Mrs. Tran won't become Mom's best friend, I know Jack won't—I want this. And I know I can't have it, but I won't let that stop me from doing anything I can to save them."

"You're not here."

"I'm… not so good with people," Sam says. "I'd help Kevin with his applications, and try every awful cooking mistake Cass made, and help Bobby in the library. I'd get to really know Mom, I'd do geeky things with Charlie, I'd help Rowena and Crowley patch things up after all these years. I'd go with Dean whenever he got the itch to hunt. But all together… Look at them. They're happy like this. I'm happy on the sidelines, just seeing them happy."

"Can't you just be selfish for once in your miserable life?"

"Isn't this selfish enough? Wanting to save the world for _them_?"

"You could watch them all die and still fight. It's wired into you. Caring. It's like a disease, and it's only gonna bring you pain."

"I know pain," Sam answers.

Gabriel shakes his head. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

"I didn't care," he says. "For an entire year. I didn't care. I was _incapable_ of caring. But I – he – I remember. He was so isolated. He would watch Dean, when Dean wasn't looking. He had my memories. He knew what he was supposed to be feeling. He knew he was a thousand miles away from anyone else in the world. He wasn't capable of feeling loneliness, but I felt it all, a year's worth of loneliness all at once."

Gabriel pops the candy out of his mouth. "Well," he says, "at least I'll die a painful death at my brother's hands before I have to do all that."

"I'm not calling you soulless," Sam says.

"Technically, I am soulless. It's all Grace in this shizzle."

Sam pauses. "Don't say shizzle. And I told you, you're not me. Me, I'd rather hurt than not care." He gestures to the tableau, and it dissipates to an empty warehouse. It's a familiar one, which is hard to say, given how much of his life is spent in abandoned warehouses and the ilk.

Gabriel points the lollipop at him accusingly. "You'd rather let your family walk all over you than risk them being angry at you," he says. "What, you think there's _virtue_ in suffering in silence? In refusing to speak up for yourself?" He's sneering.

 _Mercurial_ , Sam thinks. A trickster god himself, Mercury. He can't figure out what will send Gabriel off into another rant.

"I'm not some battered wife," Sam defends, drawing himself up.

"No, it's worse. Dean raised you. He's your mother, father, brother, best friend, savior, partner, boss – is there anything he could do that would make you walk away?"

"He's not _abusing_ me—"

"Isn't he?"

"It's not like that."

"Tell me what it's like, Sam."

"Why do you even care? We're not you and Lucifer!"

"No one is me and Lucifer. That's the problem. There's not a _handbook_."

Sam realizes, suddenly, that maybe Gabriel wants advice. That maybe he wants to—"You shouldn't try to mend things with Lucifer."

"And why not?"

"He stabbed you."

"Dean chased you with a claw hammer."

"He tortured me."

"Dean tortures loads of people."

"He tried to destroy the planet."

"Mmmmm, but who hasn't, these days?"

"He's a narcissist," Sam says. "I know him better than anyone except maybe you, and he's not my big brother. He's an egomaniac, a psychopath, he cares about nothing but himself and his goals, and his interest in Jack extends only to using Jack as an extension of his own power. If he ever had a redeeming quality, if he ever felt true compassion, he stamped it out so long ago that there's nothing left. He didn't love you. He loved having someone adore him. And he will use you to achieve his goals, and then he'll get bored when he realizes actually _having_ what he wants isn't so interesting as scheming for it, and you'll be a convenient target for the resulting tantrum."

"What gives you the right," Gabriel starts, voice soft and dangerous.

"A hundred years of being the person he took his frustrations out on," says Sam. "Having him _inside my head_. He told me I was important, that he cared about me, that he was the only one who did. And then he used my hands to beat Dean within an inch of his life and he made me feel every bit of it, just because he was annoyed. That's who Lucifer is. That's what he did to me. He killed Cass, he killed Bobby, he almost killed Dean, and I was just along for the ride. And then it got worse. A hundred years of worse."

"He's my brother."

Sam knows what that means, better than anyone. Anything can be forgiven, if it's your brother. _Gadreel. Kevin. The Mark. Working with Crowley._

"That's gotta be a two-way street," says Sam.

 _Ruby. Lilith. The Final Seal. Charlie dying_.

Gabriel just looks at him.

Sam wakes up.

* * *

They're on a pristine beach.

Sam is wearing tiny swimming trunks and Gabriel is sipping a margarita the size of his head. He's still reading _Hogfather_. Ten bucks he wakes up and the book has sand in it even though it's a dream.

"You're an asshole," says Sam, conversationally.

Gabriel smirks as he turns the page. Definitely, definitely sand. Dammit.

There's nothing to cover himself with, and after a moment of considering burying himself in the sand, he decides not to let Gabriel get a rise out of him with a Speedo, of all things. So Sam watches the horizon for a while, soaking in the warmth, watching the surfers and swimmers and children making sandcastles.

Details only someone who actually paid attention to beachgoers could populate a beach with.

Sam smiles a little at that. He's pretty sure this is Gabriel, not his subconscious, mapping the dreamscape. His subconscious doesn't like him this much. It's a little odd to consider that Gabriel sort of does.

Then again, the Speedo indicates Gabriel just likes himself that much.

"Tell me about him."        

And here they go, round and round the conversation merry-go-round of –

Wait. What?"

"Who?"

Gabriel looks at him over the top of his sunglasses, with a distinct You Moron cast to his eyebrow maneuver. "My nephew? The Antichrist? You wouldn't shut up about him when you prayed."

"I thought you might, you know. Be wondering. Besides, I kind of sent that all to you in prayer, and you've been rummaging around in my head, so why—"

"Your memories don't tell the whole story. Neither did your weird prayer info-dumps. How'd you learn to do that?"

"It's how I beat Lucifer," Sam says. "I sort of… bundled a bunch of memories and images and feelings together and forced him back. Like turning up a radio to drown him out. Except I kind of. Battered him over the head with every memory I had of Dean."

"Jeeeeeeeeee-zus," says Gabriel. "No wonder he tortured you."

Sam glares at him.

Gabriel makes a _go on_ motion.

"What, Jack? I don't know, he's. He's nothing like his father. He's a good kid. He cares. He's terrified of becoming a killer, of hurting people. His mother had so much faith in him, I think. She left him this video. And Cass – Cass likes him. He reminds me a little of Cass, actually. The whole – cluelessness, and genuine curiosity. He's honest like Cass was, too. Brutally honest, literal-minded, and not afraid to say he has no idea what we're talking about. He wanted Dean to like him so badly, he found us a hunt and everything, the traditional rite of initiation."

"Oh, great, two Castiels. That's what my family needs."

"Hey," Sam snaps.

"I'm just saying, when you start getting multiple problem children—"

" _Cass_ is a problem child?"

"Cass is the ultimate problem child. He's the family disappointment. He actually beat me out for reigning champion as family disappointment, and that is a feat, let me tell you."

"I think maybe – no, we're not debating which angels were the worst. You want to hear about Jack, we're talking about Jack. He's like Cass, and that is absolutely a good thing."

"If you say so," Gabriel says doubtfully.

"He's… also like me, a little," Sam begins. He winces. He's talking Jack up a lot, and this might ruin it. "Just. Back when Dad died, he told Dean that if he couldn't stop me from becoming Azazel's perfect soldier, he would have to kill me. And then the demon blood, and the psychic powers, and Lucifer. I guess I just know what it feels like to have everyone expect you to turn out evil."

"And you think Jack won't?"

"I think Jack is good. I think he can stay good, which is probably the bigger question for Dean and Cass. I believe in him, and he's never given me any reason to doubt. All his power, all that raw ability, and hurting people is just absolutely anathema to him. Honestly? I think Jack might turn out to be the absolute best of us."

"Sam. Are you trying to dad-cuck Lucifer?"

Sam actually pauses at that. Just a whole solid few seconds of stillness while he tries to cope with that phrase existing. Then, "I—hggg—the—dad— _what_?"

"Are you," Gabriel says, "trying to out-dad my brother. Are you, Sam Winchester, going to try and take Lucifer, the actual literal Devil, to cosmic family court to sue for custody of the Antichrist?"

Sam spares a moment to mourn the twelve year old who had hoped to one day have a normal life.

And then, without a trace of doubt, he says, "Absolutely."

Gabriel puts a fist to his mouth. "Hmm," he says, sounding strangled. He's staring resolutely ahead and not at Sam.

"I'm going to have to share custody with Cass, I think," says Sam. "Alternating weekends. Of course, maybe I should just marry Cass, you know? Give the kid a stable home life—we can get divorced when he goes off to college—"

"So help me Dad, Sam, if you don't stop talking I'm going to drop you in an especially moronic sitcom and watch you suffer."

"You wouldn't."

" _The Big Bang Theory_ , Sam."

"No."

" _The Great Indoors_ , Sam."

"That's just too far."

" _Friends_."

"That wasn’t terrible," allows Sam, who isn't a fan of the genre to begin with and doesn't understand why that makes Dean throw snacks at him during reruns night. (Netflix exists. Why do they even watch reruns with commercials and bad cable quality?)

"But everyone else is replaced with Ross."

"Oh, god," Sam says.

"And you're Rachel."

"I think I'm gonna be sick."

But actually, this.

This might be the most fun he's had in ages.

He wakes up to Dean pounding on the door. They've got a lead.

It's not going to pan out, because they never do, but they've got a lead on a flaming sword that might be able to kill archangels. Maybe. If they don't get exploded first. And it hasn't been seen since 1990, where it appeared in a strongly worded letter-to-the-editor in a small town paper, about a hooligan with a flaming sword.

Jesus.

He'd almost take Ross.

* * *

"Sam," says Castiel, and Sam realizes he's been humming quietly as he reads. "No, don't stop on my account," Cass says. "If I were unable to tune out ambient noise I would go entirely insane. My hearing is far more acute than yours. However… you seem to be in a good mood."

"Ah," Sam says. His stomach sinks. Jack. Mom. _Charlie_.

"Not that that's a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination," Cass hastens to add. "Just incongruous."

"To the world ending."

"To your mood over the past… long while. I hadn't really paid much attention until it improved. But you've been unhappy for a while."

"We've been doing pretty badly around here," Sam points out.

"Hm," says Cass.

"I've just been sleeping better, I guess."

"Gabriel is visiting you in your sleep."

Sam blinks. His eyes narrow. "Have you been—" But at Castiel's face he goes quiet. "Sorry, sorry, I know you wouldn't."

Cass looks unimpressed for a minute. Then, "I used to visit Dean's sleep, just to make sure he didn't do too much damage to his brain with sleep deprivation. I did a lot of putting your brother's atoms and cells back together, over the years. I didn't want that work to go to waste because he refuses to attain a functional sleep schedule."

"He's got the memory foam now," Sam says weakly.

Cass's eyes get squinty. "I don't see why you think—never mind. You've been seeing Gabriel in secret?"

"Cass, uh. When you say it like that, it sounds like I'm sneaking out my bedroom window to meet Gabriel for moonlit walks, or something."

"Your bedroom has no windows. And I don't think – oh. Romance. No, I mean, you've been speaking to him?"

"As much as you can speak to Gabriel. You know how it is. He shows up, we talk for a bit, it devolves into arguing, neither of us win, and then we rehash it all later."

"I don't 'know how it is'," Cass says. "He's been gone for a very long time. You have spent more time with him in recent millennia than I have. Is he…"

"He hasn't changed his mind," Sam says.

Cass glares. "Is he _recovering_ from his _years of torture and captivity_ , Sam?"

"Oh," says Sam. "Yes. I think. Maybe? He's always eating or drinking something sugary, and stealing my Discworld books. Mostly _Hogfather_ lately."

"What is Discworld? I have never heard of such a plane, and I don't recall seeing it in the Library."

"No, no, it's. It's fiction. Stuff I keep in my room. I don't even really read them anymore, but I liked them in college and I thought… I don't know, Dean was buying all these Vonnegut and Tolkien novels, I grabbed a few."

"Why would Gabriel be reading fiction?"

"He doesn't really read them, I think. He probably has, he seems like he'd like Pratchett's satire, but he mostly just uses them to avoid looking at me. Feigning disinterest, flipping through a few pages before I annoy him enough that he starts talking to me directly."

"What are these books about?" Cass asks, cocking his head to the side.

"Uh. Well, in _Hogfather_ , this – he's basically Santa Claus, right? So Santa Claus goes missing and there's no one to bring presents to the children, so Death takes over, and he gets really into it. But he's actually kind of bad at it because he gives kids everything they want, and you have to show moderation. It's. Actually a weird book for Gabriel, he's not the moderation kind of guy."

"Giving children the things they want is bad?" Cass blinks. "Is that not one's purpose as a parent? To meet your child's emotional and biological needs?"

Sam tries to mentally skirt around the elephant in the room, of Gabriel and Cass's parent and his approach to parenting. "Well," he says. "Needs, but not their every whims, no. Like letting a kid eat so much candy they make themselves sick."

"Dean does that frequently," says Cass.

"That's because Dean is an unsupervised child," Sam informs him.

Cass frowns, but not in disagreement. "I see," he says.

* * *

"—so we're going," Dean finishes.

"No," says Cass.

Sam looks up from gathering his latest research materials.

Dean stares at Cass too. "What?"

"No," Cass repeats. "We're not going. I recognize that you want to keep busy, to avoid feeling like you're doing nothing of use, but we might as well get nothing done here, where there is relative safety and a robust library, than in Minnesota, where there are neither of those things."

"Excalibur—"

"Is not in a lake in Minnesota, and is not powerful enough to kill Michael. Not even if we, as you say, soak it in holy oil and make our own flaming sword."

"I want to check it out."

And Sam realizes with dawning horror where this is going.

"We can't indulge your every whim, Dean. You're gorging yourself on candy and making yourself sick, but the candy is long shots on a way to stop Michael, and the eating is actually just obsessive investigating, and you're actually making all three of us more susceptible to attack. It's an imperfect metaphor, but the point stands."

"Unlike candy, Cass, any one of these might be our one chance to take down Michael!"

Sam slips away before Cass can reveal that he's paraphrasing Sam. Dean never actually comes and yells at him, though, so maybe Cass plays it cool.

But in his bedroom, there's a line of books.

 _The Color of Magic_ , _Hogfather_ , _Reaper Man_ , _Interesting Times_ , _The Light Fantastic_.

Sam cocks his head.

Two guys embroil themselves in a snowballing series of disasters, leading to them plunging off the edge of the world.

Death takes on a new mantle and enjoys it.

Death gets fired and a new Death takes his place.

A magician is trying to run away from danger but keeps accidentally winding up in more of it, and stays suspicious of every good thing because it always turns out bad, and the whole thing is a cosmic dice game with him as a player determining the outcome of an empire.

And the continuation of the first story, with even more missteps and miraculous saves.

Sam picks up _Hogfather_.

And then immediately drops it, because it's _so sticky_.

"I get it," he says to the ceiling, "you like being a pagan much better. You know Death goes home at the end, right?"

* * *

Gabriel's reading _Reaper Man_ in Sam's dream.

"I did read to the end," he says. "Well. No, I didn't. I cheated. But I know how it ends."

"It's an imperfect metaphor."

"Well, Rincewind goes back to school after _his_ adventure, so."

"Shut up," says Sam.

"The sword of a Principality isn't going to kill an archangel. There's a pecking order."

"I know," says Sam. "We're sort of low on options, is the thing."

"I have faith," Gabriel says, in a mocking sort of tone.

"You also have popcorn," Sam says. "Why do you have popcorn?" He's half-expecting to get hit in the balls again. And then the room shifts into a movie theater, small and lavish, and Sam sighs. "I'm not going to like this."

"Shh," Gabriel says. "The movie's starting."

Sam isn't sure what to expect.

A movie about the apocalypse starring Seth Rogen as himself is.

Probably what he should've expected.

"Who do you think plays me, in the movie of my life?" Gabriel asks.

"Charlie Sheen," says Sam.

Gabriel flicks popcorn at him.

"You deserve it for this."

"We could watch the new _It_ , instead," suggests Gabriel innocently. "I haven't seen it yet, on account of being imprisoned."

"Seth Rogen is fine, I love Seth Rogen, he's the funniest man of our generation," Sam says in a rush.

"He's awful," Gabriel says.

Sam sighs. "Then why are we watching this?"

"I thought the premise might speak to you, Sam."

"It's got a distinct voice, actually."

"Oh?"

"It says, Gabriel is a dick."

"Clowns it is!"

But he doesn't actually snap his fingers. Sam munches moodily on dream popcorn and watches a bunch of unfunny assholes play themselves.

"What did I ever do to you?"

"You stabbed me with a stake repeatedly and trapped me in holy fire twice."

"That was mostly Dean. And the stakes didn't even hurt you."

"Maybe they hurt my feelings."

"You fed someone to sewer alligators."

Gabriel toss his head back and laughs. "Yeah, I did. Man, that guy was a dick."

"So are you," says Sam.

"Hey, glass houses, buddy."

"How am I a dick?"

"You're a very negative person. Very critical. A real no-fun nancy."

"I am plenty fun."

"Sam. I put you on a pristine beach and you laid around in a Speedo fidgeting because you wanted to cover body in sand so the angel that can see through your very atoms couldn't see your hot bod. I mean, why work out so much if you're not gonna show off? And don't say it's for the job, you are the most ripped hunter I have ever seen."

"I just watch my weight and nutrition and keep up an exercise regimen."

"Exactly. Why? You don't really flaunt it. Hell, you don't even wear properly fitting clothes. I get that you're tall, but yeesh."

"My clothes fit!"

"Yeah, they're long enough, but Sam. It ruins the effect of skintight v-neck undershirts if you cover them in flannel that flaps around your wait three inches in every direction."

"I don't want people staring at my chest."

"Dear Dad, why not? It's a work of art."

"Because it isn't," Sam hisses. "I don't look good, not like Dean, I'm too tall, my posture is terrible, and I keep ruining my nutritional plans eating what Dean makes and drinking beers cos they're tradition, I guess, and when we travel it's a nightmare. And also," Sam says, "maybe, just maybe, I want someone to care about me. And not my abs."

Gabriel chews the last of his mouthful of popcorn carefully. "Well," he says.

Sam rubs his eyes. "Can I at least count on you to ignore all the giant red flags for underlying pathology and just mock me for wanting true love, or something?" At least the movie's stopped playing.

"Kid," says Gabriel, "for once in your life, you've come to the right place."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only post these here after every sixth small installment on tumblr, so if you don't want to wait another six days, follow me @wayward-idiots on tunglr.hell - I tag everything in this 'verse #the apology of gabriel, and you can find all my fic under #aline writes spn fic.
> 
> if you want explanation of the references - and there are references throughout, especially the "original sense of the word" stuff - pls feel free to hit me up there, i'll give you the director's commentary cut


	3. Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot ahoy. What, you thought there would JUST be talking? Actually, I thought there would just be talking, but I'm not in control of this story.
> 
> I wasn't content with JUST ambiguously shippy SamGabe so have some ambiguously shippy SamCass too

Sam leaves a little note on his bedside table where he finds an origami moose made out of an old popcorn bag on top of  _Reaper Man_. The pages of which now smell like butter.

_TECHNIQUE FOR ARCHANGEL BANISHING:_

_\- mention literally any emotion*_

_*only works on gabriel**_

_**and occasionally humans named dean winchester._

As an afterthought, he tracks down Dean’s stash of Oreos and leaves a few in a plastic bag.

The next morning he finds another note in its place, and a grapefruit the size of his head.

_what am i, santa claus? here’s your breakfast, sour grapes._

Sam laughs, and actually slices it up and eats it for breakfast.

He can’t dip any more into Dean’s cookie stash without facing his wrath so he leaves a bag of popcorn and writes,

_SUMMONING RITUAL FOR THE ARCHANGEL GABRIEL:_

_\- leave out sticky food. he’s basically an ant._

Then he considers it, and adds a footnote.

_the height is right too._

And maybe he doodles a melting popsicle. Possibly.

He wakes up to a gigantic popsicle stick sculpture of a hand giving him the bird, and once his half asleep mind establishes it’s not an enemy to kill, he laughs until his stomach hurts.

Unlike the moose and the note, he can’t keep this one on the shelf with his collection of Pratchett, so he pries off one stick and then takes a hammer to the rest because it’s too big to take out of his bedroom whole. Which is a shame, really, because he’d like to regift it to Dean. The worst (best?) part was, Dean might actually like it. It kinda seemed like his brand of art.

Of course, because three days is the maximum he can go without being miserable, when he goes to sleep that night – leaving a pretty impressive little doodle of an ant with wings and a flaming sword – he finds himself walking down the streets of Palo Alto.

Someone’s holding his hand.

And even though he’s walking down a picturesque street, and the light hit justs right on the buildings, giving everything a soft movie-filter glow, he can’t shake the feeling this isn’t right.

The hand in his tightens, nails digging into his skin like talons. “You think this is what you get after what you’ve done?” A voice mocks him, slipping between Jess and Amelia and Eileen and sliding into –

Lucifer is laughing at him, refusing to drop his hand even as he recoils, dragging him forward. “You don’t get to have this, Sam. You don’t  _deserve_ —”

And then the entire landscape is gone, replaced with a normal apartment, and Gabriel is standing in the little kitchen. “Pudding?” He offers.

“Uh,” says Sam, still breathing heavily. He checks his hand. There are no marks, no breaks in the skin where Lucifer’s fingers dug in.

“You like Black Forest Cake?”

“That was—just a nightmare. Not Lucifer in my head. Right?”

“It’s just me, you, and this hot fudge sundae.”

Sam spots a Jack Russell terrier sleeping on a giant armchair. “What about this little guy?” He asks, kneeling in front of him.

“I’ve had him for… What year is it?”

“2018.”

“Almost seventy years.”

“ _What_?”

Gabriel shrugs. “Reality, shmeality, Sam. Angels aren’t bound by physics. If you take the long view, the universe is just something small and round. Like a snowglobe.”

He gestures to a table along the wall, which… contained a snowglobe, and half a dozen other knicknacks beside.

Sam looks at the dog, and then the knicknacks, and then the dog again.

“You can pick him up, he’s a big old baby, likes to be held,” says Gabriel.

So Sam picked up the dog – “What’s his name?” – and tucked him into the crook of his arm.

“Uh. Russ.”

Sam turns to look at Gabriel disapprovingly. “You named your Jack Russell ‘Russ’?”

“Shut up.”

Russ snuffles and paws at Sam, so he redirects his attention to scratching behind the dog’s ears and under his chin while he gets a closer look at the hodgepodge of random items.

There’s a snowglobe, yes, of Milwaukee of all places. And what seems to be an actual Faberge egg, next to what Sam’s pretty sure is a Kinder egg toy. A dirty little blue bottle that looks to be old, handmade glass. Some sort of antique medicine bottle, maybe. A red figure vase painting of, yep, that’s porn. It’s probably priceless. Priceless ancient Greek tentacle porn. Christ. And at the end there’s a pipe in a little glass stand. It looks familiar.

In fact, it looks like – “Is that a replica of the Magritte pipe from _The Treachery of Images_?” Then it occurs to him that. “Is that  _the_  Magritte pipe?” Had there been a  _the_  pipe?

“It’s just a replica I found,” Gabriel dismisses. “Don’t get too excited. Not everything I collect is going to come straight from the annals of human history.”

“Should’ve known you’d like Magritte,” says Sam.

“You’re so  _human_ ,” Gabriel says. “You see a pipe, you think it means something about my opinions on art and psychology. And maybe it does, maybe there’s some secret code to my collection of junk, but you’re going to make missteps based on your own misunderstandings.”

“That’s the problem with secret codes,” Sam says, “they’re too often ambiguous by necessity.”

“Angels don’t really do ambiguity,” he says.

“You’re not like most angels,” Sam points out.

Gabriel frowns. Looks away.

Sam gives Russ one last pat on his belly and then sets him down gently. “That wasn’t meant to be an insult. I meant – you’re not a complete dick. Like most of them were.”

“Thanks,” says Gabriel drily. “Glad to hear that even if my entire family is a bunch of a-holes, I’m not a  _complete_  dick.”

He casts about awkwardly for a change in subject and: “So what does the pipe mean?”

“Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe, Sam. Even when it’s part of a larger metaphor.”

He wakes up feeling better rested than he has in weeks.

* * *

 

Sam is on a swan boat, painted solid black, and it’s pedaling itself. Gabriel is sitting on the front with an arm looped around the neck, fingers skimming in the water.

“So,” he says, “how often does that happen?”

“What?” Sam feels like he’s just dropped into the middle of a conversation Gabriel’s been having with himself.

“Nightmares about Lucifer.”

“Oh. Well. Not as often as they used to? Cass actually took a bunch of the trauma into himself. Really messed him up for a while.”

“But you’re the one who’s still got nightmares.”

Sam shrugs it off as best he can. “Life like mine? Bound to be nightmares.”

“And here you want me to shack up and join you idiots.”

He considers this. “No,” he says.

“What?”

“I don’t want you to join us. Not because I don’t like you,” he hastens to add.

“Okay, now I have to hear your twisted Winchester logic, because that’s the  _only_  reason you should have not to want me to join you.”

“I want my family to live,” Sam says, “but you were right, we never ask  _at what cost_. And after all the misery, all the work we put into just keeping our heads above water, just for one more chance at a glimpse of happiness. The only thing that makes it  _worth it_ , aside from my family, is saving people. We’ve lost sight of that somewhere along the road, when it became life-or-death all the time. That was always what I clung to, when I was at my lowest. People. That I was redeeming myself through saving everyone I could, even though I couldn’t save everyone.”

“Don’t forget,” says Gabriel, “I’m one of the monsters you hunted.”

“I haven’t been seeing much poetic justice in the obits,” Sam says.

“So you checked.”

“I was trying to gauge your recovery, actually,” Sam lets out a little laugh at that. “Based on whether you were back to creating weird news stories.”

“You were tracking the wrong thing,” says Gabriel.

“Oh?”

“You should’ve been looking at the release records for psychiatric inpatient facilities.”

Sam smiles. “Pornstars.”

“My gift to porn, for all it’s done for me: some of its greatest stars back,” Gabriel says.

He takes a deep breath, and: “I don’t want you to join us because if you do, you die. We’re cursed. And I’m selfish enough to want at least one person to get out alive.”

Gabriel stares at him with all the intensity of an ancient being, an ancient being who can and has stared down to Sam’s very atoms, has sifted through his memories and heard his prayers and walked in his dreams, and still looks at him like he’s a math problem he can’t begin to solve. Sam’s perversely glad that he’s still able to annoy angels simply by existing.

But what Gabriel says is, “How can you stand to even look at Jack? At me? At Castiel?”

“What do you mean?”

“His son, his brothers – how can you stand any of us?”

“Jack is  _nothing_  like Lucifer,” Sam says hotly, “and neither are you and Cass. We’re not defined by what our families have done. Sins aren’t –  _commutable_  to nearest relative. Lucifer is Lucifer, the rest of you… you’re your own people.”

“But you blame yourself for what Azazel did. For what Lucifer did.”

“Because they did it because of me,” he says. “Because they wanted to use me.”

“Then they did it for themselves. Not for you. You were just a victim of Lucifer’s  _bullshit_.”

Sam swallows. “I don’t like that word.”

“Victim?”

“Yeah.”

“Thought that was the usual word for whatever poor sap that runs afoul of monsters, for hunters." He can hear it in Gabriel’s voice that he’s still counting himself among the monsters. 

Sam wonders where the divide is, in Gabriel’s head, between Trickster and angel, or if he’s counting angels as just another rmonster. In a way they sort of are, to the Winchesters.

"For civilians,” Sam corrects. “I’m a hunter.”  _And a monster_ , he doesn’t say.

Gabriel cocks an eyebrow. “So whatever happens to you is your fault for getting in the monster’s way.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Dad’s sake, kid,” says Gabriel, shaking his head. “And I thought I was messed up. How do you function under the weight of that cognitive dissonance?”

Sam considers the absolute surrealism of talking about this on a swan boat while it gently rows itself down a picturesque, twisting river. Dissonance indeed. Rather than trying to actually face Gabriel’s question head-on, he says, “Why are you bringing all this up now?”

“Because even I can see the mounting urgency,” he says. “Because you’re hurtling towards whatever stunt you can pull out of your asses in a misguided attempt to save the world THIS time. You’re running out of  _nows_  for me to bring things up, Sam.”

“We still don’t have a plan.”

“So it’s T-minus how long until your brother decides to go in guns blazing with  _no_  plan?”

Sam winces. He gives it four days, max.

A tunnel looms up ahead of them.

“I know you don’t want to actually join us,” says Sam, “but if there’s anything – any idea – that could help us. Like the rings. I know that’s too much to ask as it is, but. We’re spinning our wheels here.”

“The danger must be growing,” Gabriel sings softly. Strange lights, with no real origin Sam can see, are playing across his face.

“What?”

“Are the fires of Hell a-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing?”

Sam sighs. Leans back in his seat. He’s pretty sure real swan boats aren’t this roomy. But then, a real swan boat probably would tip, with both of them on the same side of the boat, and Gabriel sitting on the swan’s shoulder instead of inside the damn thing. “There’s no earthly way of knowing,” he replies.

Gabriel’s grin gets swallowed up by the dark of the tunnel like the Cheshire Cat, and Sam wakes up.

There’s a Wonka Bar on his bedside table.

Inside is a golden ticket that just says,  _ONE WAY ANGEL AIR FARE TO ARUBA, FOR USE IN CASE OF DUMB PLANS_.

Sam is pretty sure they’ve hit a new, sort-of-unspoken agreement wherein if Sam tries to ask Gabriel for help, Gabriel goes back to trying to convince him to bail.

“Sorry,” he says to the empty room, “I just had to ask—”

A cascade of travel brochures pelt his head.

“I got it, I got it, no more asking for help.”

* * *

The bar is empty but for tacky taxidermied animals, and a the neon glow of a jukebox pumping out “The Candyman”.

Sam turns in place, looking for Gabriel. “Dude,” he says. “Really?”

There’s a snap, and the music changes to something less obnoxious. Sam recognizes it as a song by The Police after a minute. Gabriel’s leaning against the jukebox when Sam turns. “Don’t like my taste in music?”

“The Wonka references are killing me.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about that movie,” says Gabriel. “You said yourself you’re waiting for me to get back into the just deserts game. Punishing people who really  _deserve_ it.”

“Whoa, hey, I wasn’t encouraging you to go back into feeding people to alligators,” Sam says.

“You’re  _really_  stuck on the alligator guy.”

“I’m the one that had to get up close and personal with the remains.”

“At least there wasn’t much left.”

Sam wrinkles his nose.

“You know what’s occurred to me?” Gabriel continues.

“Hopefuly not more carnivores to feed people to.”

“My brother is a monster.”

Sam is too taken aback to reply. And then he’s a little too wary to say  _well, duh_. So he still doesn’t say anything.

 _A hundred billion castaways,_  Sting sings in the silence,  _looking for a home_.

“You think you deserve everything that’s happened to you. But it was never what you deserved. And Lucifer, and this other Michael, neither of them have  _ever_  gotten what they deserve. There’s never been justice for everything they’ve ruined, everyone they’ve hurt. And I can’t do it. But someone has to,” Gabriel’s eyes are sharp, blazing with something Sam can’t quite identify. Someone has to make sure they get exactly what they deserve. And that’s why you have to do it, Sam. Because there’s no one else who can. And because it’s the most poetic thing I can think of.“

"I can’t do anything,” Sam says. “There’s no plan, no – anything,” he says, helplessly.

“I’m sure you’ll think of something,” says Gabriel.

“I told you. You backed the wrong horse. I can’t do anything. Mom and Jack and everyone else are going to die, and then Lucifer’s going to go free, and I can’t do a  _damn_  thing to stop it.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure you’ll find some way to throw a spanner in the works, like always, and your family will live on to break the world again another day.”

“Great. Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Gabriel throws himself into a chair and swings his feet up onto the table. “Anytime, kiddo.”

Two beers appear on the table. They’re cold enough to sweat condensation. Sam sits down and takes his and – “Are we friends?” Sam blurts out.

Gabriel arches an eyebrow. “Told you, I’m not the friends type.”

“Then why are you always hanging around? We established that I’m not you, and we’re not friends, and you aren’t going to help us stop Michael. So why are you visiting me?”

“It’s because you’re Charlie,” says Gabriel.

“I’m a ten year old boy who’s going to inherit a candy factory.”

“Always so sassy. You drank the Fizzy Lifting Drink, Sam, but you didn’t take the gobstopper. I told you, you’re the horse I’m betting on to win the race and stop the bad guys. You and your rag-tag bunch of idiots.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Then chances are two entire worlds are destroyed and we all die. But you won’t get a chance to say I told you so.”

“I’ll be sure to pray it at you with my dying breath,” Sam says.

The jukebox switches to “Rude”, mid-chorus, and Sam snorts and almost chokes on his beer. Dream-beer. Whatever.

* * *

Sam goes to put the coaster from the dream-bar and the golden ticket and the Magritte print postcard into the little box he keeps of odds and ends on his bookshelf, but something catches his eye on his Pratchett shelf.

There’s a copy of  _This Is The End_  between  _Reaper Man_  and  _Interesting Times_.

 _I thought the premise might speak to you_ , Gabriel’s voice echoes in his head.  _Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe, even if the pipe is part of a bigger metaphor._

Sam grabs  _Reaper Man_  off the shelf.

There’s a bookmark just inside the front cover of the book, a bookmark Sam never bought.

It’s a Christmas bookmark featuring Santa Claus, vintage looking.

Sam grabs  _Hogfather_  off his nightstand and finds an Uno card stuck in the back few pages. He stares down at its foxed edges and the little crease.

He’s pretty sure it’s from the ancient pack of Uno cards they lost on a hunt in Nevada when he was nine, because he remembers seeing the crease and knowing what card Dean was holding.

It’s a green Reverse.

They lost these cards nearly thirty years ago.

“Message in a bottle,” he says. “You son of a bitch.”

And he gathers a stack of sticky novels, the Uno card, the DVD, and the bookmark and takes them out to the war room table. Spreads them out.

“What the - ” Dean starts.

Sam shushes him.

“These are the books that Gabriel has been borrowing,” Cass guesses, accurately. He reaches out, but his fingertips stop before he touches any The Color Of Magic.

That had been the first book, Sam remembers. He slides it to the far left. Then it was  _Hogfather_. Then  _Reaper Man_. Then  _Interesting Times_. Then  _The Light Fantastic_.

After a second, he remembers - he puts  _This Is The End_  between  _Reaper Man_  and  _Interesting Times_.

He puts the bookmark just above  _Reaper Man_ , the Reverse card just above  _Hogfather_.

“It’s a message in a bottle,” he says. “He’s been trying to tell me something this whole time.”

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admits. He drags a hand through his hair.

Dean picks up  _The Color Of Magic_. “I remember this,” he says, “you were obsessed with this in middle school.”

“It’s a good book,” Sam says.

“You called it an excellent deconstruction of the pseudomedieval fantasy genre,” Dean tells him.

Sam opens his mouth to ask Dean how the HELL he remembers that, but what comes out is, “I’m Rincewind.”

“Rincewind is… a character?” Cass asks, reading the back of the book over Dean’s shoulder.

“Yeah. Wizard. He was in a magic school but he left and became a guide to this guy Twoflower, who liked to travel - that must be you, Dean - and they stumble their way into all kinds of trouble. There’s a cliffhanger that picks up directly in  _The Light Fantastic_ , over here. That’s the last book I saw Gabriel reading, before he went back to previous books. Especially  _Hogfather_.”

“The decision to place both these books, which – you say they may be representative of you and Dean’s story?”

“Yeah,” says Sam. “Yeah, I think so.”

“It may be that he is saying these three books are  _within_  the narrative of you and Dean’s lives.”

“Yeah, these two both sort of echo things we’ve actually done.  _Hogfather_ , where Death takes over a new role – I thought Gabriel was talking about himself, becoming a pagan god, but he says it’s reverse, right? Well, Dean once took over for Death for a day.”

“I remember,” says Cass, darkly.

“Right, so - which explains - he told me sometimes a pipe is just a pipe. So maybe Death is just Death, not Gabriel. And in  _Interesting Times_ , Rincewind, that’s me, becomes a sort of pawn in a game between Fate and the Lady, who are competing for who gets to control the throne of an empire.”

“Symbolizing you being caught in the struggle between Lucifer and Michael,” says Castiel.

“Twice,” mutters Sam. “Yeah. And in  _Reaper Man_  – well, Death is forced to retire, and eventually comes back. Maybe that means Dean killing Death didn’t work?”

“Why is there a Christmas bookmark there, then? And what’s with the movie?”

“The bookmark refers back to  _Hogfather_  - the  _Hogfather_  is basically Santa Claus.”

Sam stares at the scattered books.

“Death - a new Death - the new Death. There’s a new Death and… and whoever it is - uh, I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“You told me that Death enjoyed his new role as  _Hogfather_ ,” Castiel says. “Is the reversal indicative that the new Death does not like the job?”

Sam jolts.

“Last time,” he says, “last time Death wanted a day off so badly he bargained it for his ring. Whoever the new Death is, they hate it. Maybe we can convince them to help us if we - I don’t know, give them some time off?”

“Give them time off,” repeats Dean. “Jesus. You think it’ll work?”

“I think Gabriel thinks it will.”

“What about the film?”

Sam looks up. “It’s – well. I thought he meant he was Death, taking on a mantle, right? Guess he just wanted me to realize Death meant Death, not him.”

“I see,” says Castiel, who clearly doesn’t.

Sam looks at the assembled items again.

They have a plan.

Oh, god, they finally have a plan?

* * *

 

Gabriel doesn’t show up that night. Sam tries to figure out when waking up to an undisturbed bedroom, without anyone wandering in his dreams, became a disappointment.

He lies awake, staring at the ceiling, the following morning. Long past the alarm goes off for his morning run, he stays in his room, moving between the bookshelves – the empty space where five books had been is now dominated by an origami moose, a popsicle stick, a note, a golden ticket, a postcard, a coaster, and the sticker from a grapefruit stuck to a little square of paper.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” he says, softly, his hands laced tightly, “because I don’t know - if you feel like I was using you for something like this, I didn’t. I didn’t think you’d - I hoped, I guess, that you’d help, but after a while I hoped you wouldn’t, even though we need you. Someone should make it out of association with us without us ruining their life. But you gave me what I need to protect Dean, and Cass, and everyone else. So. Thank you. And not just for that. For everything. Thank you, Gabriel.”

* * *

While they assemble what they need to summon Death, the inevitable question is broached.

Actually, what happens is, Dean says, “So how long do you think I’ll have to play Death this time?”

And Cass looks at him like he’s finally lost his mind, and Sam realizes with a jolt that the obvious downside to this plan is Dean’s continued insistence on playing the hero at risk of his own life.

“You’re not,” Sam and Cass both say.

Dean starts, “Like hell—”

“This is my family’s fight,” says Castiel, “my brothers’ fault. Not to mention, I have more experience dealing with souls and cosmic power than you.”

They all pause, no doubt thinking about their respective brushes with power - the Mark, Purgatory, demon blood - and then hastily Sam says, “Maybe you shouldn’t. Heaven is a mess, you’re more likely to be able to help there then me or Dean.”

“Besides, I’m the one who’s been Death before,” says Dean.

“You’re not doing it either,” Sam says. “I am. I can’t do much, but I can do this. You just have to promise me you’ll let me do it, however long it is. No trying to break the deal.”

“You can’t. We don’t know what we’re even getting ourselves into, it could be a lot worse than a simple exchange, hell, it could be the Mark all over again - ”

“You always do this, Dean,” Sam says. “You always make the decisions and then do it all yourself and it always ends bad. When are you going to stop putting me on the sideline like a child?”

“I’m not losing you!”

“Tough,” says Sam, “because I’m not letting you do this.”

Dean’s jaw sets. “Let me?” He asks.

“Let’s talk about this,” says Castiel.

“No,” Sam says. He keeps his eyes on Dean. “We didn’t  _discuss_  it when you tricked me into letting an angel into my head. We didn’t  _discuss_  the Mark of Cain, or trusting Crowley, or Ketch. You made decisions and you let me in on them later and I’ve let you do it but this time I’m making the decision. For once, let me make the call.”

Dean exhales. “Sam,” he says, but doesn’t actually argue.

He’ll take it.

“I’ll do it. Whatever it is.”

* * *

When he finishes packing up his few truly personal belongings and piling all the hidden weapons up on the bed to make it easier for Dean to clear out the room, Sam kneels by his bed like he used to kneel beside motel beds, when Dean wasn’t around to make fun of him, and he laces his hands together again, and he prays.

“You haven’t showed up since I figured it out. I know you left it in a message like that so we  _wouldn’t_ talk to you about it. And that’s fine. I just wanted you to know – we’re going to do it. And whatever the cost is, I’ll pay it, and we’ll fix this. I want you to know that for once, you’ve bet on the right guy.”

 _Thank you for believing in me_ , he thinks, but can’t say. You can’t pray to someone to thank  _them_  for believing in  _you_.

Sam leans his forehead against his interlaced hands. “I know you want out. And I think you’re – I think you’re right. But if you ever want family. Cass will be here. Or, I think he will. Dean, too, with time. Once he recognizes that it’s what I’d want from him. And Jack might…” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I’m projecting what I want onto you. I just want you to know you can be free without being alone.”

He pauses for a second. Because he could never be free without cutting himself off. But Gabriel can. If Sam does this, and does it right, his family lives and Sam can make sure the world is fixed, and people will stop demanding more of Gabriel. He can finally help everyone.

“We’re about to do the ritual. So. I just wanted to say goodbye.” He pauses. “Just… maybe not in the original sense of the word.”

Not even the joke makes Gabriel appear.

* * *

 

“Sam,” Castiel says, “I urge you to reconsider. It seems certain the new Death will demand far longer than a single day of freedom, if they hate their role so much as Gabriel suggests.”

“I know. I’m going to start negotiating with a year,” Sam says.

Cass looks exhausted. “And when that isn’t enough?”

“Five. Ten. I don’t  _care_ , Cass.”

“The difference between one year and five, five and fifty, is infinitesmal compared to the lifespan of an immortal, Sam,” says Castiel, and for a second Sam can see in his eyes exactly how ancient he is. “I can’t imagine what would be sufficient to inspire Death to even grant us a boon, let alone kill Michael for us. Death doesn’t interfere with the living. There are  _rules_.”

“Eternity,” Sam says.

“ _No_.”

“My lifetime won’t be much. But souls are immortal, right? Not like I’ll really be alive, as Death. So. Eternity.”

He can tell Cass thinks it might stand a chance of working, because his expression is one of grief.

Sam clenches his hands at his sides so he doesn’t freak Cass out too much with his own expression.  _Eternity_. Half-hearted dreams of finally retiring, or at least just… dying, and never being dragged back – he feels them all dissipate. Tries to imagine being the last being in all creation.  _I’ll reap God._

“You’ll never know rest,” Cass warns. “You won’t be able to visit your family. Even I’ll die before you do. You won’t be able to go to Heaven with your brother. You won’t even be offered the comfort of the void given to angels upon their deaths. You won’t  _live_ , not really. You’ll simply exist. From now until the end of time.”

“If we can stop Michael – set things to rights – it’ll be worth it.”

“Sam…”

“I need you to hold him back. When he realizes it’s going to be permanent, he’s going to – to try and interfere. I need you to keep him from doing anything stupid. Not just now. But after, if I actually convince Death. Find Jack and Mom, he does better when there are people for him to take care of. The important thing will be keeping him too busy caring about other people to wallow.”

“And what about me?” Castiel demands, growling the words out barely above a whisper. “You’re my family, Sam.”

Sam’s throat closes. He swallows, “You’ll have Dean, and Jack. And – ” He pauses before he says Gabriel’s name, because he isn’t sure Gabriel will  _want_  to patch things up with Cass. But. “And don’t hold it against Gabriel for running after Asmodeus. What makes you family isn’t blindly serving Heaven, or being in the family business. It’s giving a damn about each other. Even though he left. Cause he wasn’t leaving you, Cass. Don’t ever think it was about you. It was what he needed.”

“You aren’t just talking about Gabriel.”

“I’m leaving,” says Sam. “He’s not going to like it. And I don’t want him to hate me when I’m not here to earn his forgiveness back.”

“You have nothing to earn. Nothing to prove. You can change your mind at any point, Sam. We can find another way.”

“No,” says Sam, “we can’t.”

Castiel sighs.

Sam pulls him into a hug, and Cass hugs back tightly. “Thank you,” he says.

Cass says something, softly.

And Sam smiles. “Love you too, Cass.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said at the beginning of the section in question on tumblr, there is a scene in this fic that, while not actually a reference to the fic per se, necessitates me linking to it because (a) i love the fic and (b) it introduced me to the concept of black swans, and Sam being one. So. Black Swans, a Sam/Gabriel fic: https://archiveofourown.org/works/93545
> 
> Again, this is not going to be Sam/Gabriel unless you choose to read it that way. 
> 
> A playlist for this section of the fic: https://open.spotify.com/user/alinehannigan/playlist/3rGZqWVAesNHz683m3b6eN?si=dQ33_Dk5TX6UyhgRbs17IA
> 
> And finally: SAM WINCHESTER, I KNOW I WROTE THIS PERSONALLY, BUT YOU ARE SO _GROUNDED_ UNTIL YOU CAN LEARN TO STOP SACRIFICING YOURSELF

**Author's Note:**

> @wayward-idiots


End file.
